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AppFlood and Their Misleading Ads

Unhappy encounter

I recently encountered an BIG issue with AppFlood, and have decided to leave them till the issue is sorted out.

With Google's new developer policy out, I, like many other fellow developers was busy updating the apps to be more compliant. I was truly moving towards just having AppLovin and AppFlood (walls and panel ads) in.

And then it popped up. An ad of Candy Crush (even mentions "king.com" in the ad). I really was suspicious of this ad as I have not seen any big name ad shown on my AppFlood trials. This ad even used the icon of candy crush.

I clicked it, and it went to a web page (redirection as many ads do), and it started an auto-download of a Moborobo client. No sign of candy crush at all.

Now, this is clearly in violation of Google's policy, under "Impersonation and Deceptive Behaviour". Remember, anything and everything about your app is your responsibility as a developer. You show misleading ads in you app, you will be penalised.

More disappointment

Unfortunately, the more disappointing thing is when this was brought up to my contact in AppFlood, I was told this is usual practise when an ad does not cover certain location. Due to some technical issue between advertiser and AppFlood, someone somewhere thought I was located in a different country, and thus the ad was served to me.

Yet clicking the ad did something other than expected.

I don't believe the reasons given made sense at all. How can my location be wrongly determined?

Missed Revenues?

This is either a disregard by AppFlood or an opportunity taken by the advertiser on a loop hole on the system.

In the scenario above, I will never get the download counted as candy crush did not get downloaded. Instead someone somewhere made money by downloading a totally different app.

This might be a reason for getting so many clicks but a very low download (and revenue) count.

Goodbye AppFlood

So till AppFlood comes clean on this practise, I have removed them from my apps. What a shame as I was really looking forward to using their walls and panels ad format. And I then had to scramble to look at alternative walls type ad providers.

It is up to you to decide on what your course of action will be on this.

If I ever get an update from AppFlood on this, I will keep you folks updated.

Hey thanks for sharing this information. Its really nice information here. Today in tech market Android is very good and daily new changes are commneing. Its really good to make money with Android apps.Your blog is really nice I will share this with my friends. Android Tablet Apps

Its good that the author has brought to light the problems he has encountered. Appflood or applov does not really matter, it is true that many companies are following the same trend despite google's stringent policy. We will request the appropriate authority to test the apps and games supplied by admob, revmob, appnext, chartboost, adcolony and others also

Highly recommend this is scam networkPayment time came, the manager just disappeared, really really hard to reach them,I tried to contact him via email, skype, phone, no respond, Phone service is not available, the number of this network just for fun, you cant call to that number, dont believe me, just try it. after many emails , last week he told me that advertiser has been confirmed and wire to him. So my payment in process,of course when advertiser pay you that’s mean your traffic was good and have confirmed from them. After that,appfloofd show up himself, about over 1 week later he told me he not received payment and my account under investigation. I used my traffic at many other network like adworkmedia and leadbolt .. all they accept my traffic, those network said fraud from my traffic just about 5-8%, that’s really accepted. You can do anything perfect 100%, right? ,he blocked my account and want to eat my commission too. Let me tell you something, No publisher have no fraud percent, at least is 1-5%. Too bad for this network, appflood was a lier, This is my story that happened to me, And it can happened to anybody, He push you to work very hard, then he do anything to mark you on fraud, blocked you account and stole your commission. This is very big scam network.

When releasing a new app, it is understood that it will rank far down the food chain. After all, your app is new and unproven just yet.

What Google has done on the Play store is that they have given new app an opportunity to live, a chance to get to a more respectable place in the world of the unknown, the Google Play ranking algorithm.

Good looks go a long way in getting downloads for your apps. I'm a fan of looking out for beautiful app designs. I've looked at so many apps, gotten so much inspiration, but have yet to achieve anything that I can be proud of.

Blame genetics if you must. I am a developer, and although I play the guitar and love music and beautiful art and images (even tried photography once), I suck in the design area. I can give an idea, a design, but cant execute it. I'm a coder damnit!